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‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

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Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#81

Post by po8tin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #76
po8tin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“…however younger employees greatly benefit from in person learning and mentoring.” Doesn’t require a permanent office. Temp cowork spaces or bundling working with a career mentor in the final stretch of college are two options I just thought of laying in bed while also thinking about making coffee. More of the same is not an option for all the cost-benefit analysis that’s come up before. Prior to world war industria…

> Prior to world war industrialization, 90% of workers were independent. If you change that to “prior to the First Industrial Revolution”, and by “independent” you mean “worked on family or village farms”, sure, that's approximately right. Just before even the first world war, there is no sense where this is true, even loosely.

Right, so, “prior to world war industrialization.”

I know what I wrote. Have a good day!

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#82

Post by twic »

amathyst wrote: post #73

There seems to be such a strong anti-RTO/pro-remote sentiment on HN. I don’t hold that against anyone: if you prefer working from home, then I’m happy for you! But here’s another take: I’m a software engineer and I love working from the office. I enjoy my 40 minute commute (on sunny days I ride a bike and on rainy days I read a book on the train). I enjoy the separation in my life between where I work and where I liv…

I like working in the office too, for similar reasons. I do think that as years go by, more people will come to realise what they have lost by working from home.

But i don't think the vigorous antipathy to working in an office is an HN thing. I think it's that many people who don't like working in an office really don't like working in an office, and so mission post about it, in a way that office appreciators don't.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#83

Post by lolinder »

eru wrote: post #44
dleslie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really should be the other way; they ought to tax office space punitively in order to coerce people not to commute at all. Commuting is a major source of emissions, personal health ailments, and encourages human-hostile urban design.

I might agree with your policy aims, but the policy cure you proposed would be worse than the disease. If you don't like people driving, then tax that directly. Or better, for a start, remove subsidies for driving first, whether they be explicit or implicit. Only then think about levying special taxes. Eg remove mandatory minimum parking requirements for real estate developers, convert most roads to be paid for by th…

Why is your proposed solution better? What makes theirs worse than the disease?

Their solution is to tax corporations for forcing their employees to commute. Yours is to increase the costs for those employees.

These costs are already huge ($8000+ per year), and so far have had little impact on company policy. Do you really think that increasing commute costs will substantially alter the number of people who are required to commute?

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#84

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

amathyst wrote: post #73

There seems to be such a strong anti-RTO/pro-remote sentiment on HN. I don’t hold that against anyone: if you prefer working from home, then I’m happy for you! But here’s another take: I’m a software engineer and I love working from the office. I enjoy my 40 minute commute (on sunny days I ride a bike and on rainy days I read a book on the train). I enjoy the separation in my life between where I work and where I liv…

I understand feeling this way if the company actually closed the office so you literally could not go in. But even remote-friendly places typically have an office which is big enough for the people that go, so you'd still have company even if plenty of people were remote. I understand why some people like RTO (even though I'm not one of them), I don't understand why they have such hostility towards the WFH folks.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#85

Post by samsolomon »

amathyst wrote: post #73

There seems to be such a strong anti-RTO/pro-remote sentiment on HN. I don’t hold that against anyone: if you prefer working from home, then I’m happy for you! But here’s another take: I’m a software engineer and I love working from the office. I enjoy my 40 minute commute (on sunny days I ride a bike and on rainy days I read a book on the train). I enjoy the separation in my life between where I work and where I liv…

I think the animosity is geared towards the forced RTO. I would be surprised if anyone here would hold heading to the office against you.

The problem is when someone doesn't want to go into the office, but is being forced.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#86

Post by effingwewt »

dnissley wrote: post #40
bluefishinit wrote: post #6

It feels like RTO is quickly evaporating the leverage these big companies temporarily created with their mass layoffs. I think the plan was to create a poor labor market so they could demand RTO. Well, it looks like the majority of the industry is calling their bluff and refusing to go back to the office regardless of the threat of unemployment. The tech job market seems to be rejuvenating so I think if people couldn…

> I think the plan was to create a poor labor market so they could demand RTO. This is an extremely paranoid/conspiratorial way of thinking.

No it isn't, in fact I'd say not believing it plausible is the epitome of naivety, if not outright burying your head in the sand.

I'll use the ongoing writer's strike as an example: The studios outright said[1] they wanted them poor and in apartments so they'd have to take a deal.

[1] https://www.theroot.com/studios-reveal-cruel-plan-to-push-wg...

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#87

Post by SKarasu »

“Everything from daycare to public transportation, toll roads, fuel and fuel taxes, auto purchases and maintenance, dry cleaners, nail spas, restaurants, clothiers, hair stylists, dog walkers, nannies and office leases suffer when people work from home”

That sounds terribly similar to a "you" problem

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#88

Post by toss1 »

bluefishinit wrote: post #32
fullshark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has any master plan here, everyone is winging it and trying not to screw up so much they get fired/replaced by the board, while still achieving their preferred outcome. The end result is this kind of limbo, where no one can trust the current status quo fully.

This is incorrect. CEOs are literally planning these moves together. In a more general sense they're also creating an open culture to promote this type of thing. Take a scroll through some VC/CEO twitter accounts and see how many whine about WFH or people "cheating" at work, working two jobs, not having a work ethic... The capital class is good at working in its own interest and it has a lot of leverage to do so.

Yup. The capital class that participates in this carp is also bad at managing. I wish I could locate it again, but a study some decades ago concluded that remote work makes good managers better and bad managers worse. Seems to be the difference between managing for results (where you DGAF about spurious indicia of work) vs managing for spurious indicia of work that are more like indicia of minute-to-minute control (e.g., seeing someone's butt in a seat, tracking keystrokes, calling ad-hoc meetings, etc.).

Any serious manager has projects and tasks for the workers, and a realistic idea of what can be accomplished. If they are handing out those tasks and resources, and work of sufficient quality is getting accomplished on time, they recognize that it does not matter if the person is in the office across the hall, in their home office, or on the beach in Bermuda.

(And if the manager is giving so little work that the worker can take two jobs, but quality work is getting done at a sufficiently profitable rate to justify that job, so what if the worker is 'moonlighting'?; the manager is getting what they need at a market rate, and has a happier employee)

Good managers also have the advantage of being able to hire from a global talent pool instead of a ~1-hour-commute radius from each office, and drastically reduced office real estate costs. Those are REAL competitive advantages that of which the smart CEOs will take advantage.

Sadly, most are not that smart, and the RTO movement is proof.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#90

Post by jeffbee »

gotaran wrote: post #50
heyjamesknight wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that "mass exodus" really that sticky though? At least in NYC, rents are back up above what they were pre-pandemic. Nobody I know can find an apartment.

NYC’s population is still below pre pandemic levels. . Exorbitant rent prices there are due to multiple factors, but population increase is not one of them: https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/8/4/23819420/why-is-nyc-rent-so... .

Yes but this is not really exodus. What happened at the onset of COVID was that the domestic migration out of coastal megacities continued apace, and the international migration into coastal cities abruptly stopped. You have to look at both flows to understand the population process.
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